Freedom is the opportunity for right development, for development in accordance with the progressive ideal of life that we have in conscience. Charles Horton Cooley More Quotes by Charles Horton Cooley More Quotes From Charles Horton Cooley Each man must have his I; it is more necessary to him than bread; and if he does not find scope for it within the existing institutions he will be likely to make trouble. Charles Horton Cooley individuality doe men A man may lack everything but tact and conviction and still be a forcible speaker; but without these nothing will avail... Fluency, grace, logical order, and the like, are merely the decorative surface of oratory. Charles Horton Cooley grace men order Faith in our associates is part of our faith in God. Charles Horton Cooley associates faith-in-god One who shows signs of mental aberration is, inevitably, perhaps, but cruelly, shut off from familiar, thoughtless intercourse, partly excommunicated; his isolation is unwittingly proclaimed to him on every countenance by curiosity, indifference, aversion, or pity, and in so far as he is human enough to need free and equal communication and feel the lack of it, he suffers pain and loss of a kind and degree which others can only faintly imagine, and for the most part ignore. Charles Horton Cooley communication pain loss A cat cares for you only as a source of food, security and a place in the sun. Charles Horton Cooley cat cooking caring I is a militant social tendency, working to hold and enlarge its place in the general current of tendencies. So far as it can it waxes, as all life does. To think of it as apart from society is a palpable absurdity of which no one could be guilty who really saw it as a fact of life. Charles Horton Cooley ego doe thinking So far as discipline is concerned, freedom means not its absence but the use of higher and more rational forms as contrasted with those that are lower or less rational. A free discipline controls the individual by appealing to his reason and conscience, and therefore to his self-respect; while an unfree control works upon some lower phase of the mind, and so tends to degrade him. It is freedom to be disciplined in as rational a manner as you are fit for. Charles Horton Cooley discipline self mean Unless a capacity for thinking be accompanied by a capacity for action, a superior mind exists in torture. Charles Horton Cooley mind action thinking To persuade is more trouble than to dominate, and the powerful seldom take this trouble if they can avoid it. Charles Horton Cooley powerful trouble ifs The thing that moves us to pride or shame is not the mere mechanical reflection of ourselves but the imagined effect of this reflection upon another's mind. Charles Horton Cooley pride reflection moving We have no higher life that is really apart from other people. It is by imagining them that our personality is built up; to be without the power of imagining them is to be a low-grade idiot. Charles Horton Cooley idiot personality people When one has come to accept a certain course as duty he has a pleasant sense of relief and of lifted responsibility, even if the course involves pain and renunciation. It is like obedience to some external authority; any clear way, though it lead to death, is mentally preferable to the tangle of uncertainty. Charles Horton Cooley relief pain responsibility To desire to be an artist is to desire to be a complete man in respect to some one function, to realize yourself utterly. A man is a poor thing who is content not to be an artist. Charles Horton Cooley artist desire men A strange and somewhat impassive physiognomy is often, perhaps, an advantage to an orator, or leader of any sort, because it helps to fix the eye and fascinate the mind. Charles Horton Cooley eye leader mind Prudence and compromise are necessary means, but every man should have an impudent end which he will not compromise. Charles Horton Cooley should-have men mean The most effective way of utilizing human energy is through an organized rivalry, which by specialization and social control is, at the same time, organized co-operation. Charles Horton Cooley energy social way There is perhaps no sort of self more subject to dangerous egotism than that which deludes itself with the notion that it is not a self at all, but something else. It is well to beware of persons who believe that the cause, the mission, the philanthropy, the hero, or whatever it may be that they strive for, is outside of themselves, so that they feel a certain irresponsibility, and are likely to do things which they would recognize as wrong if done in behalf of an acknowledged self. Charles Horton Cooley self hero believe The passion of self-aggrandizement is persistent but plastic; it will never disappear from a vigorous mind, but may become morally higher by attaching itself to a larger conception of what constitutes the self. Charles Horton Cooley passion ambition self Between richer and poorer classes in a free country a mutually respecting antagonism is much healthier than pity on the one hand and dependence on the other, as is, perhaps, the next best thing to fraternal feeling. Charles Horton Cooley class country hands Institutions - government, churches, industries, and the like - have properly no other function than to contribute to human freedom; and in so far as they fail, on the whole, to perform this function, they are wrong and need reconstruction. Charles Horton Cooley government church needs
